The present invention relates to printed articles in general, and in particular to an interactive printed article with a touch-activated presentation.
Interactive printed books generally include multiple physical pages of printed material (such as text and pictures) along with pertinent electronic circuitry to play back various pre-recorded audio tracks. Such interactive printed books may have activation mechanisms that are autonomous or activated by user interaction with the book content.
Interactive printed books having autonomous activation mechanisms may utilize a series of sensors and receivers to detect the turning of a physical page of the book, and some designs utilize resistive flexor sensors to identify a particular page. Some designs alternatively utilize embedded radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in each physical page and a sensor on the book binding to determine which audio track to play. Interactive printed books that employ the above-mentioned autonomous activation mechanisms may require thicker pages made of laminated paperboard (and for this reason referred to as “board books”) or may require the reader to hold or orient the book in a particular manner, which may distract the user from the book content and the desired immersive environment provided by the audio tracks and thus negatively impact the user's experience. Further, the market for board books is nearly entirely limited to young children, restricting the ability of authors and publishers to develop and market interactive printed books for the mass market or for other market segments.
Moreover, current autonomous activation mechanisms provide only for the recognition of the pair of physical pages to which the printed book is open. If a user wants to replay the audio track associated with a given page, the user has to turn to a different page and then turn back to the given page. When turning to the other page, the user will likely activate a different audio track than the user desires to hear presented. Alternatively, the user may be able to close the book and reopen to the desired page to cause the desired audio track to be replayed. Regardless of which method is employed, the reader is inconvenienced, and the continuity of the user's experience is interrupted.
Additionally, current autonomous activation mechanisms make it difficult to associate more than one audio track with a given pair of physical pages. This limitation is a particular disadvantage, for example, for educational books in which it would be desirable to associate specific media tracks with different features of the same physical page. Examples of such educational books that do not currently exist might include, for example, a reading primer that allows the user to listen to a voice reading a particular line of text or a musical instruction book that plays a sequence of measures in one of the lines of music printed on a page.
Further, current autonomous activation mechanisms do not give the user a convenient way to not play the audio track associated with a given page or to delay the playing of the audio track. Consequently, to extend the foregoing educational book examples, it would be difficult for a beginning reader or musician to attempt to read the words or play the music on a given page prior to hearing the corresponding track play the corresponding audio track.
Interactive printed books that rely on user interaction to trigger presentation of an audio track commonly provide pressure-sensitive switches in the binding or cover of the book. In one design, the back cover of the book has an array of switches and corresponding indicia on the physical pages of the book that are aligned with the switches on the back cover. When the user manually presses on an indicia on a given page, pressure is transferred through the pages of the book to activate the associated switch and play the selected audio track. This arrangement is inconvenient because it requires the user to hold the book in a specific position or on a flat surface to assure that the proper switch is activated. Furthermore, the number of switches and number of pages is limited by the precision with which pressure can be reliably transferred through the pages to the desired switch on the cover.
In other designs of interactive printed books having non-autonomous activation mechanisms, pressure-sensitive switches are located in the pages themselves. While supporting more precise selection of audio tracks, audio books having pressure-sensitive switches incorporated into the physical pages of the book require significantly thicker pages than those in an ordinary printed book (e.g., laminated paperboard pages), thereby increasing the size of the book and the cost of materials and decreasing the number of pages that can reasonably be included in the book. Further, care must be taken to distribute the pressure-sensitive switches so that a user pressing on a switch on one page does not inadvertently activate a switch on another underlying page.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide an improved touch-activated interactive printed book that offers a user-friendly and intuitive experience and that can be manufactured with a form factor and page thickness similar to standard non-interactive printed books.